


out of the shadow (and into the light)

by Iolaire02



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Also kind of, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams and Nightmares, Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper Bonding, Gen, Jim "Chief" Hopper & Steve Harrington Bonding, Jim "Chief" Hopper-centric, Nightmares, Not Beta Read, Psychological Horror, Upside Down Mythology, You're Welcome, kind of, yes i did create my own background monster
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29774955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iolaire02/pseuds/Iolaire02
Summary: Down in a top-secret Soviet base, Joyce turns the keys a moment sooner; when the dust clears, Hopper is gone.He is stuck in the Upside Down; there may be Demogorgons lurking in the shadows, and something is dogging his footsteps, but Hopper is his own worst enemy.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Steve Harrington & Jim "Chief" Hopper, hinted Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. devour the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is complete, and it's not super long, either - there are seven chapters, and I plan to update every Monday to give myself time to (hopefully) finish up the Steve-centric prequel I'm working on and the sequel I've started. This is technically my first work in this fandom, so my characterizations are likely more than a little off; at this point, the characters are stuck as they are (ie: I'm not going back to change them). Some of these chapters are heavy on the internal monologuing, while others are more dialogue heavy, just as a heads-up if that isn't your thing.
> 
> This starts part-way through 3x09, and I changed a few things to make it work. As mentioned in the tags, this is canon divergent, and isn't compliant with the scenes in the end credits or the season four trailer.
> 
> Enjoy, and please feel free to let me know what you think!

“No matter what happens,” Jim says gruffly over the sound of Henderson’s singing, looking Joyce in the eye, “we turn the keys. No matter what, you get me?”

“Hop,” Joyce protests, her voice cracking with it, and her dark eyes dart all over his face, taking in his expression. She falters, and it makes Jim wonder what his face is saying that his words didn’t.

“No matter what,” he repeats harshly. “We’ve gotta get that gate closed, Byers, and we gotta do it as fast as possible.” His mouth sets itself in a grim line, and Joyce’s shoulders slump.

“No matter what,” she repeats reluctantly.

Satisfied, Jim continues his impatient pacing. He wants to snap at Henderson, who is _still_ singing a surprisingly lovely duet with the girl who could tell them Planck’s Constant if she would just _stop singing._ They don’t have time for this, but even so Jim knows that this is the fastest way to get the code. Damn Murray, really.

They don’t have time for this. El and the rest of the kids are still up there, out in the open, and Jim is in a secret Soviet base, far below them. If they’re in trouble, he can’t help them.

He wants a cigarette; it’d help calm him down a bit. He almost turns to ask Joyce if she’s got one, but then the duet starts winding down, and Henderson’s girlfriend – it’s odd to think that the Henderson kid’s got himself a girl when Jim… doesn’t – says, “Planck’s Constant is six point six two six zero seven six times ten to the negative thirty-fourth Joules per second,” and Jim lunges towards the keypad to punch the digits in before he forgets – he can already feel the numbers slipping his mind, but then he's never really been one for numbers – and the door clicks open, thank god.

Jim grabs the case out of the safe, spins on his heel, and runs towards the control room with Joyce hot on his heels.

Somehow, it is easier than he would have expected to get everyone out of the room. Jim supposes that a fear of guns and gunfire and lunatics firing said guns must be universal, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? He’s managed to get the Soviets out of the way; the room is empty, save for Jim and Joyce and a whole bunch of buttons.

He flips the case open and stares down at the two keys lying innocently inside. It’s bizarre to think that these tiny little things are what will cause the drill to self-destruct.

It’s strange that _this_ is what will end it all.

He and Joyce each walk over to a consol. The key slips inside so easily that he can’t help but think that maybe everything will go right for once. Everything is set to go when Grigori appears from fucking nowhere and ruins everything, because of _course_ he does.

Jim watches from his place on the ground as Grigori tosses Joyce across the room; he staggers to his feet and launches himself at Grigori’s back while he’s momentarily distracted, throwing him off balance. Unfortunately, Grigori rights himself quickly, and Jim quickly finds out that shoving him up against a wall isn’t enough to beat him in a fight; it just makes Grigori angrier than he already was, and Jim ends up with a fist in his face and pain blossoming beneath the force of Grigori’s knuckles.

Somehow, between Grigori’s fist knocking him to the floor and Jim’s elbow jumping backwards into Grigori’s face, they end up staggering out of the control room and down the steps of the catwalk that wraps around the drill, still trading aggressive punches, still grappling furiously for the upper hand.

Grigori shoves him, and Jim almost topples over the railing. A few punches later, and Jim is spitting blood out of his mouth as he glares daggers at Grigori. He wipes his mouth, beckons his enemy forward, and puts his fists back up in front of his face.

Jim worries about their proximity to the drill as he and Grigori stagger around it, lurching terrifyingly close to the thing, almost rolling over the railing when, for a heart-stopping moment, it becomes difficult to keep his balance, when it becomes difficult to plant his feet because they’re both lunging for each other so hard, offering little thought to the dangers of their surroundings because the primary danger is their opponent.

It is Jim against Grigori, it is red and white and blue against red and gold, it is a race to see who can hit hardest and fastest. It's a fight to see who can win.

Finally, Jim gets Grigori on his back beneath him, and he sends stabbing punch after stabbing punch into his chest, the force of them enough to cause Grigori to jerk involuntarily against his fists before his leg comes up to sweep Jim off of his feet and onto his back.

He is half off the catwalk, his head far too close to the rapid spinning of the drill. Jim cannot take his eyes off of it, the fear strikes him so deep in his heart.

 _No matter what happens,_ he remembers telling Joyce, _we turn the keys._ He kind of regrets it, now, when he is so close to the drill that will explode when she turns the keys. He never _really_ considered that he might not make it out of this alive, and when Grigori leaps forward and plants his foot on Jim’s throat, he thinks that if he dies, he’ll at least be taking this Soviet bastard with him.

Grigori looks down at him dispassionately as Jim struggles to draw breath against the pressure on his trachea. His eyes are emotionless.

Through the thundering sound of blood rushing to his head, through the overwhelming, fearsome whirring of the drill, Jim thinks he can hear the sound of the walkie talkie crackling from the control booth. 

He thinks maybe it’s time to close the gate, and he hopes Joyce is ready, hopes she’ll take his _no matter what_ to heart, because he won’t make it out of here whether or not she turns the keys. She may as well close the Upside Down so that Jim can feel like he’s accomplished something.

But… it feels like it’s taking too long, and so Jim reaches up, and he fights against the pressure on his throat. He gets Grigori off of him, bashes his face against the drill before he jerks back. Jim pushes him against the railing, refusing to let him get the upper hand again; he digs his thumb into Grigori’s shoulder, snarls, “I’ll see you in hell,” at him, and swings the man while he’s off balance, throwing him into the drill.

The machine spits electricity from it, blocking him from the control booth, and Jim chances a glance at the sinister red glow of the Gate before he turns to look back at Joyce, already nodding, already mouthing the words, “ _Do it.”_ She meets his eyes, nods, and turns the keys.

 _No matter what happens,_ Jim thinks with some regret as he stumbles backwards. The drill glows white hot, electricity surging out of it as it spins faster. For a split second, the red of the gate expands, as though the energy from the drill is splitting it open wider. Jim lunges toward it, leaps through the air, feels the heat from the machine’s explosion against his back, burning away at the fabric there, burning away at the skin as the pent-up pressure propelled him toward the Gate.

All of a sudden, the world in front of him is dark and sinister – it is something out of his memories-turned-nightmares. Jim hits the ground hard, his arms and legs screaming in protest as he lands and just barely manages to turn it into a roll.

When he finally stops moving, Jim thinks that he can still see a red glow seeping along the vines that spread along before him. He turns toward it just in time to see the edges of the Gate knitting themselves back together, shutting the light out of the Upside Down; it’s almost like a solar eclipse, except with those, the sun tends to come back. Down here, it’s like the mouth of the Gate is eating the light, consuming it, dragging it down into the darkness that will never let it go free.

It closes faster than it did back when El first closed it in November, and Jim wonders if it’s because a machine opened it this time around, or if it’s because it wasn’t open for over a year before it was closed.

Either way, the Gate is closed. The Gate is closed, and Jim is locked on the wrong side of the Upside Down with a blistered back, a bloody face, a sore throat, and possibly some broken bones.

This is fucking fantastic; Jim is stuck in a place that despises heat and water without either of those things on hand; he’s injured; and at the moment, his chances of survival aren’t looking good.

Jim reminds himself that he’s been in the Upside Down before. He can do this. He can survive here without any basic human necessities. It’s not like the Mind Flayer made it back through the Gate, so at least he doesn’t have to worry about that.

He just has to worry about Demogorgons and Demodogs and Demo-whatever-elses. It’ll be fine. If Will Byers – a kid without any formal training of any kind – could survive down here without any prior knowledge of the place, Jim will be perfectly, totally fine.

He’s just gotta let everyone know that he’s alive. That’s all. Just let them know he’s alive, and then they’ll figure out a way to get him out of here, and then he can be back where he belongs, with Joyce – who probably thinks he’s dead – and El and the kids.

Jesus. If – _when_ – he makes it out of here alive, El is going to kill him.

Or, no. El will give him the silent treatment, and given how quiet it is down here, that’ll be worse.


	2. darknesses in life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely comment and the kudos! I'm sorry to say that there isn't any Steve & Hopper bonding in this chapter or the next one. To make up for it, kind of, I'll be posting two chapters today so that there is a chapter with Steve and Hopper in it next Monday.
> 
> Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

He wallows for a few minutes before he finally comes to terms with the fact that if anything is going to happen in this god-forsaken land, he’s going to have to be the person to do it. He sighs heavily, dreading everything that will be involved in surviving this. He kind of just wants to sit on the ground, surrounded by vines that will inevitably crawl up his body and suffocate him.

He’s done so much already. He’s dealt with this parallel universe bullshit three times too many, and now he’s stuck in the lightless, soulless version of Hawkins. He’s alone; he knows that much. The Gate is closed, and El and Joyce and the kids are all safe; the Mind Flayer was outside the Gate when it closed, so it would have died; whether it was in Hargrove at the time or not, the kids have one less problem to worry about. His being here ensures that, because he’s alone, cut off from the people he loves, and he thinks that maybe he’s done enough already. Maybe it’d be okay to just sit here and let the vines do what they want.

But – 

He can’t help but think that El would be disappointed in him if he just gave up without even trying. He remembers that Will must’ve fought to survive; he’s sure that Barb Holland did as well. How can he do any less, especially when he’s got a kid waiting for him on the other side, and the promise of a date with Joyce on Friday at seven o’clock?

Jim fights his way to his feet, grimacing at the pain that lances up his back, that pulls at his face, that constricts around his throat, that jabs through his arms and legs.

First things first. Jim’s gotta patch himself up as well as he can if he wants to make it through this, which means he needs to make it out of this underground lair, out of Starcourt fucking Mall, and through the streets of Hawkins to the hospital, because Jim sure as hell doesn’t have the shit he needs to fix himself, and even if everything in the Upside Down is rotten and putrid, the hospital’s his best bet for finding any of the stuff he needs.

Jim realizes about five minutes later that getting out of her is going to be far more difficult than he had first assumed. For one thing, he didn’t exactly memorize the way in, and Murray is the one with the map. Of course, Murray not being here, this doesn’t help Jim any. He’s not sure how much the map would have helped anyway, given that the drill’s explosion seems to have collapsed the catwalk up to the control booth.

“Fucking fantastic,” Jim grumbles, kicking his foot out at the remnants of the drill and instantly regretting it when the painful sensation vibrates through his leg. “How the hell am I supposed to get outta here?”

The warped, vine-tangled metal doesn’t offer a reply. Jim huffs loudly into the dead air and surveys the wreckage around him. He wonders, with a sort of repulsed reluctance, if he can use the vines that have crawled over every available surface to pull himself up onto the detritus that was once the catwalk, and – having come up with something resembling a way out of this hell-hole – resolves to try it.

Jim wanders over to some of the sturdiest-looking vines, wraps a hand around one, and gives it a solid yank; he makes a face at the slimy feeling of the invasive plants – no one is around to see him, at least; the creeping plant holds against the force he applies and despite the repellent texture, his hand doesn’t slip. Jim sighs: he was kind of hoping that he’d have to find another way up and out, but he has realized that things rarely go the way he wants them to.

Annoyed, Jim gives the creepy crawly vines one last frustrated yank, just because. Then, he wraps the gross appendage around his hand, and begins to pull himself upwards, struggling to find footholds in the metal lurking behind the vines.

He wonders why it’s so damn hard to scale vertical surfaces; it really makes his experience more unpleasant than it’d otherwise be. Zero out of ten for hospitality and comfort, really. Do the Mind Flayer and Demogorgons have something against, like, human trappings and basic comfort? 

He could really use a drink or a smoke right about now, but his borrowed uniform has neither, and anyways, he’s a bit preoccupied with climbing this damn wall.

It takes longer than he’d like, and he’s glad that no one is there to see him struggle up a wall, but he finally makes it to the top. He staggers to the control room on sore legs. His entire body is aching, really, but he thinks that he can at least rule out the possibility of broken bones if he’s managed to use his arms to climb and his legs to walk. If he’s wrong, he’ll just deal with it later.

Now that he’s in a place that is semi familiar, Jim thinks that maybe he’ll be able to back-track. He may not have Murray’s map, but he does have a functional brain, even if said brain is what got him into this situation in the first place.

Jim trudges through the long, winding hallways of the Soviet base wishing that he had a vehicle because he’s kind of over walking and other forms of physical exercise. Unfortunately, he has not had good experiences with relaxing in the Upside Down; he knows that Will was fine and assumes that the kid was able to get some rest while he was down here, so he doesn’t know if it’s just a _Jim Hopper_ thing that means that vines try to strangle him the second he tries to take a break.

Maybe it was because he’d been trying to dig his way out of the tunnels after he’d smashed his way in. He knows that some things don’t like being attacked, or whatever. So maybe the vines had just been retaliating, but Jim still doesn’t trust them.

The walk to the elevator is unnecessarily long, but Jim gets there eventually. Of course, it’s only after he’s pushed the button to close the doors that he realizes the problem. There’s no fucking electricity in the Upside Down, and there’s no other way out of this fucking base, either. At least, there’s no other way that Jim knows of.

He slumps down to the floor of the elevator and leans against the wall that is in the perfect location for him to bang his head against it in frustration. “You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” he growls furiously. He stares up at the ceiling of the elevator miserably and doesn’t bother trying to stifle the groan that escapes him at the sight of the grate there.

The last thing he wants to do right now is climb up an elevator shaft, even if it _is_ his only way out. He’d rather get strangled by vines, which is a very real possibility. He can already feel them creeping forward in a mockery of an embrace. He shrugs them off with some disgust and stumbles to his feet before shoving the grate aside and heaving himself up to stand on top of the elevator.

The climb up the elevator shaft is even worse than the one up to the catwalk; his hands start bleeding part way up; he thinks about just… letting go, at one point, and then he thinks about how disappointed El would be if he just gave up; he thinks he’s maybe a quarter of the way up when his muscles start burning, but he doesn’t think he’s got the ability to climb back down, and he doubts the vines would let him live through any rest he attempted to take, so he continues his shuffling climb, pulling himself up the braided metal ropes when the ladders mysteriously disappear. It reminds him a little bit of Chutes and Ladders, except it’s real life, and not fun, and there’re no slides involved; instead there are never-ending ladders except for when they do end, and there’re metal cables dangling from the ceiling he can’t see, and there’re vines crawling over everything in a desperate bid to keep him from reaching his goal.

He just wants to get to the goddamn hospital. Is that so much to ask?

Apparently, now that the Mind Flayer is (presumably) gone, the Upside Down has a benevolent ruler. Jim makes it out of the ruins of Starcourt, down the various streets of ghost town Hawkins, and into the deserted hospital without any issues. He doesn’t even see any Demodogs lurking in the surplus of shadows as he makes his trek.

In another stroke of luck – which Jim refuses to attribute to whatever being now oversees the Upside Down, given that he’s stuck here without any way out – he manages to find some ointment for the burns on his back, and some bruise cream for his throat. He can’t do much for his face, and his arms and legs aren’t broken, just sore, so he slathers the various creams on, wraps his burns with some thankfully uncontaminated gauze, and pockets the tubes of ointment. Then he goes in search of different clothing; for some reason, he doesn’t love the idea of wandering through the Upside Down – and possibly ending up back in Hawkins in the future – in a Soviet uniform. There’s also the fact that the back is missing, thanks to Jim’s near miss with the drill, and the Upside Down is not the warmest of places, even in what he assumes is probably summer, given how uncannily similar to Hawkins the place looks.

Every time Jim has been here previously, it has always struck him as odd that the Upside Down is such a perfect copy of Hawkins. He always wonders why it’s Hawkins. Why not some major city? But then, Jim figures, maybe if he walks far enough, he’ll find himself in the shitty mirror version of Indianapolis, or Chicago, or Los Angeles, or Vegas, or even New York City. Maybe the Upside Down is always Hawkins because that’s where he’s always entered it from.

Jim makes a mental note to not walk to the USSR – it would suck to be there if a gate opened; Jim has dealt with more than his fair share of Soviets for someone who works as the police chief in some random nowhere town in the middle of the States, and he doesn’t really want to get spit out surrounded by more of them.

It gets him thinking, though. If the Upside Down really is an alternate universe’s version of the world he knows and has a love-hate relationship with, where the hell are all the people? He’s seen Demodogs and Demogorgons and repulsive, creepy-crawly vines, a distinct lack of food and water, and zero humanoid figures. If the Upside Down is basically evil-Earth, shouldn’t there be, like, evil people, too? 

Jim brushes the thought off. He’s got enough problems to deal with without adding potentially evil people to the mix. What he needs right now is to survive this god-forsaken place, and to do that, he needs to figure something out for water and food and weapons.

He looks around himself. All he can see is gross Upside Down-ness; the hospital probably doesn’t have much in the way of consumable items – and even if it did, Jim is very aware that hospital food is repulsive without adding the Upside Down into the equation – or weapons. He snags various bottles of medications, a first aid kit, and a rusted scalpel that he finds lying on the floor – either someone was doing surgery before everything went to shit, or someone tried to defend themselves from a Demo-something-or-other (Jim wishes he could scoff at such naivety, but here he is, picking up a scalpel to defend himself from monsters – before he leaves the hospital behind and heads for Bradley’s Big Buy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, I am well aware that it would be extremely not possible to get out of an elevator shaft like Hopper did. My only explanation is that this is fiction?
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. child do you fear the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a quote from _Anne of Green Gables_ in here. It's also technically from the show, but L.M. Montgomery said it first.
> 
> There is a little bit of "psychological horror" at the end of this chapter; I'm not sure if it's actually psychological horror, but I'm not sure what else to call it.

After raiding the canned goods at the supermarket, and finding several unopened bottles of water (he supposes that it makes sense that the plastic surrounding the water would be protected from the poisonous environs, just like canned foods and other non-perishables seem fine when unpackaged things have rotted to hell), Jim trudges towards his house; he feels on edge, like he’s being watched, but whenever he stops walking to look around himself, there is nothing there; he doesn’t even spot any Demodogs or Demogorgons, and it seems as though his only company is to be found in the ever-present vines that have apparently developed invisible eyes.

He is unpleasantly surprised by the creatures that greet him when he steps foot into the cabin in the woods. A Demodog is lurking within the confines of the walls; it is extremely territorial and defensive, and Jim finds that he doesn’t want to find out if a scalpel is enough to kill the creature. He beats a tactical retreat to the decrepit old trailer that he lived in before he lured El into his life with Eggos and Jim Croce.

He shakes away the memories of El; he can’t afford to get distracted here, not when there are monsters in the unlikeliest of places. _Damn,_ though, he misses her.

Jim is inordinately pleased to find that there is nothing lurking in the shadows of his trailer. He’s still pissed that there was a Demodog in the place he shared with El, but there’s no helping that. Even better than the empty house is the rifle he finds in the corner, and the box of ammo sitting relatively untouched on the shelf. 

It would be better if there was a flamethrower or even a box of matches lying around so that he could light up the Demogorgons – he has gotten tired of wasting bullets on the fuckers, and fire seems to be the most effective method of ridding the world of the creatures; unfortunately, the only Zippo he can find in the house won’t light, and Jim has never been one to keep matches in his house or on his person – a fact that he is starting to regret.

Jim wonders if any of the kids’ houses would have matches or working lighters. He figures it can’t hurt to take a look; he figures his best bet is to check Joyce’s houses first, since he knows she smokes; he remembers that Max’s older brother – the Hargrove kid – smokes, too, so maybe that’s a good backup plan if Joyce’s doesn’t pan out.

He wonders what time it is, or what day it is; it feels like it’s late, but that might have something to do with the fact that it was night before he ended up here. Jim finds that he is exhausted, and so he looks for the least evil-plant-infested part of the trailer and tries to get some sleep. It only kind of works; he dreams of a Demogorgon – possibly the largest he’s ever seen – attacking Joyce, and that quickly transitions to images of El dying, and the kids getting hurt, and that switches to memories of Sara looking pale and wan with an oxygen mask on. It is only when he hears the heart monitor stop beeping that he realizes two things: she has none of the corn-silk hair that curled around her ears before she got really sick, and she is dead.

He wakes up, his heart racing and his limbs shaking. He is filled with the sort of frenetic energy that only follows his worst nightmares. He swallows around a quivering breath and finds it within himself to be grateful that he didn’t dream of ‘Nam.

Even with his excess energy, the walk from his trailer to the Byerses’ is longer than he expects, and he realizes that he’s never actually walked there; he always showed up in his car. It turns out to be a good thing that he doesn’t have his car: it always announced his arrival, and that was never an issue when it was _people_ living in the house. Now, though, even his heavy footsteps are not enough to alert the Demogorgons– two of the beasts, all things told – of his presence; it’s also lucky that he managed to clean up whatever blood was on his person back at the hospital because they don’t smell him, either.

He wonders why the creatures are here; last time he was here with Joyce, there was only ever the one Demogorgon, and it spent half its time in the real world until Jonathan, the Harrington kid, and the Wheeler girl managed to kind of kill it. Jim decides to wait the monsters out; maybe if he watches them long enough, he’ll figure out what the hell they’re doing. And if they do leave, he’ll be able to look for fire; hopefully, if they find him, his gun will be enough to kill them.

Jim sneaks around to the back of the house, and he watches through the windows as the Demogorgons mill about the rooms; their behavior is unlike anything he has seen so far: one of the creatures paces the length of the corroded kitchen before moving into the vine-covered living room, where the other one is sort of sitting on the rotted piece of furniture that Jim thinks is the couch. They chitter at each other for a moment, the sound grating to his ears, filled with squeals and shrieks as it is. Then, the Demogorgons make their way to the open front door and rush down the driveway before turning onto the street. They move too quickly for Jim’s eyes to follow, and soon enough, they are out of sight.

With the monsters gone, at least briefly, he scours the house for anything that will allow him to light a fire; the vines haven’t tried to grab him and choke him yet, but Jim has vivid memories of the ones that traced the tunnels beneath Hawkins; he knows that the repulsive plants will eventually come for him, and that is without taking the Demogorgon infestation that seems to be running rampant into account. So. His first order of business is finding matches, or a lighter, or a flamethrower as quickly as possible.

There is a half-empty box of matchsticks in one of the drawers in the kitchen, but other than that, there is nothing to help Jim in his endeavors; he notices a bowl of rotting fruit on the counter, and there is more putrid food in the fridge, which he notices is unplugged. There are tiny little vines coming out of the outlets and wrapped around the metal prongs of the plug, so he figures that can’t be helped. It makes him wonder, though. What would happen if the fridge _was_ plugged in. Would it work?

He keeps the idea in the back of his mind; maybe it’ll help him get out of here in the future, but right now he needs to focus on surviving this accursed place. With his box of matches safely in his pocket, Jim makes a swift getaway; he doesn’t need to tempt fate by staying here any longer than necessary, not when he knows that Demogorgons live here.

He stops by the Hargrove house, hoping he might be able to find something fiery there; when he arrives, though, there are two Demogorgons and a Demodog haunting the place. He sighs in exasperation and decides to try one of the other kids’ houses.

Jim doesn’t know much about their families, he realizes. He knows Henderson’s mother is a doting parent, and that his dad is outta the picture; he thinks that Sinclair’s got a younger sister and both parents, and he knows his mother’s a doctor at Hawkins Memorial Hospital. Wheeler’s also got both parents and two sisters; he knows that Karen doesn’t smoke, but he’s not sure about Ted. Either way, he doesn’t hold out much hope for finding matches or a lighter in any of their houses, which leaves Harrington’s house.

He knows even less about Harrington than any of the other kids; what he does know is what everyone in town knows: Harrington’s parents are never home, and Harrington himself used to be a douche but has reformed in the past year and a half. He thinks Harrington used to smoke, and knows the kid’ll probably still have that nail bat that Henderson has talked about to Wheeler who told El who told Jim. He supposes he might as well snag that; god knows the third and fourth-hand praise he’s heard about it makes the monstrosity appealing.

Jim makes his way to Loch Nora, which is a ridiculously far walk from Old Cherry Lane, and it brings him past the Wheeler and Sinclair houses, so he makes a half-hearted attempt at looking for fire starters, but the former has five Demogorgons in residence, and the latter has four, so neither place is really worth his time.

Harrington’s place is ridiculously large, and there is only one Demogorgon inside. Jim manages to sneak up on it and use one of his matches to burn it to the ground. The fire has the added effects of burning away some of the vines and warming up the dead air of the Upside Down enough that Jim is no longer shivering constantly.

He ransacks the house and is pleased to find a frankly massive stash of canned goods and bottled drinks in the pantry; several boxes of matches in one of the kitchen drawers; the nail bat in what he assumes is Harrington’s room; and, amazingly, a flamethrower hidden in a dark corner of the basement.

He makes a mental note to thank Harrington for being so well stocked when he gets out of the Upside Down; he doesn’t know why the kid has all this shit in his house, but it has increased his chances of survival drastically.

Jim decides to stay put for the time being; as far as he can discern, he is safe from Demogorgons here, and there are enough weapons, food and water to last him for a while. There’s no point in giving up a good thing, and this is probably about as good as it gets in the Upside Down.

There isn’t a lot to do down here. Jim finds himself bringing his wares into the pantry, which is the smallest room in the house, but is still large enough to be fairly comfortable. It’s easy to defend, too. Jim collects some old clothing from Harrington’s bedroom and uses one of the matches to turn it into a torch of sorts; he does his best to burn the vines away from the floor and walls of the pantry and shuts the door against them.

For the first time since he ended up here, Jim feels almost safe: there are no Demogorgons in the house, and there are no vines lying in wait to strangle him in his sleep. He opens one of the cans of food, scoops the contents out, and shovels it into his mouth with his fingers; then he cracks open one of the water bottles and drinks half of it before coming up for air.

It’s interesting, and he hadn’t noticed it before, but the amount of ash in the air seems to be less concentrated the longer he is in here. There is certainly less of it than there ever was in the vine-infested tunnels, where the Upside Down spilled out into the real world.

Having consumed some food and water, Jim finds himself relaxing into one of the corners. He feels more exhausted than he has in a long time, and he wonders vaguely if that’s because of all the walking he did today, or if the lethargy is just a side-effect of being in the Upside Down for an extended period of time. He remembers that Will had been out cold when he and Joyce found him, but Jim doesn’t know if that was the week in the Upside Down taking its toll, or if it was due to the Mind Flayer getting its greasy, eldritch vines all up in Will’s orifices.

He closes his eyes, and the barrier of his eyelids against the outside world doesn’t make things much darker than they were before; he lets the cold, lifeless air of the twisted world he’s found himself in drag him into unconsciousness.

* * *

_“‘She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do wish she’d lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say ‘mother,’ don’t you? And father died four days afterwards from fever too,’” he reads quietly. His eyes flick up to the little girl laying, half propped up, in the bed perpendicular to him. Her eyes are wide with intrigue, and he feels himself drowning in them._

_He wonders about her sometimes. She is so innocent, with her big eyes and her pointed chin and her downy curls; it is hard to believe that she has suffered so much. It is hard to believe that, at the tender age of seven, she will be lost to her parents. It is hard to believe that, at the age of thirteen, she has never known her mother because she was spirited away from the woman the moment she was born. It is hard to believe –_

_He pauses and looks at the girl in the bed. He cannot tell the color of her hair: is it blonde or brown? He cannot tell the color of her eyes: are they blue or brown? He cannot tell her name: is she Sara or El?_

_He looks down at the book in his hands, but it is gone, and his fingers are long and curved and gray. They are tipped with talons that look as though they are made for killing._

_He returns his attention to the girl in the bed, but she is no longer propped up. She’s not there. She is flat on her back, a clear mask over her mouth and nose, tubes protruding from her fragile body; her curls are gone, and there is a machine behind her with a flat green line splitting its face. He hears the monotonous beep, but the sensation of it is dulled by the scent of blood._

_He looks back down at his hands. They are still_ wrong. _The clutching claws are dripping with blood. He pushes himself to his feet and chances another glance at the girl._

_Who is she?_

_It doesn’t matter. What matters is that she is dead; he tore her apart. He tore_ both _of her apart, and there is blood spilling from her still forms. He can smell it, and he shrieks with joy._

_He wants to devour her._

_He lunges for her, but she stops him. Her hand – small and fleshy and_ human _– is outstretched; it shakes in the dead air surrounding them, but she stares him down and holds him back._

_“No,” she says, her eyes dark and determined. Red stains her hands, pours from her chest, like her heart is bleeding for him. “No,” she repeats, and she looks straight at him._

_He can see himself in her eyes: tall and emaciated, a featureless face. He is a fearsome creature, and he roars with the joy of it. His face opens into five parts, revealing a gaping maw edged with thousands of sharp teeth. He lunges for her again, consumed by his hunger, unable to deny his desire to have her._

_He roars again, this time in frustration, when the vines that are laced along the walls and floor untangle themselves and wrap around her upper arms, dragging her back and away from him._

_She screams, and he thinks that at least she is afraid._

_He turns and leaps past the blood-stained bed where she once lay and claws his way through a wall; it seals up behind him, leaving him in a dark place, infested with vines, and scorched air, others like him._

_He is home, but that does not quell the hunger and fury that coils within him, waiting for a moment to strike._

_He will find the girl, and he will kill her, and he will destroy her._

* * *

Jim wakes up, trembling, and whispers into the dark, dead, suffocating air: “I need to get out of here.”


End file.
